Notations by and from the Author:

First of all, apologies are in order.

1. To the haters: sorry for updating. Please find it in your hearts tolerate the existence of this story.

2. To the casual enthusiasts: sorry for not updating. As penance, I give you extra long chapter. I'm trying out a new style or generating humour, one that aspires to be what Alexander Pope described as "using a vast force to lift a feather".

You may have noticed the inconsistent double/single quote and hyphen/endash usage in my stories. Does this brazen misuse of punctuation instill within you a deep, ferocious rage – a fury most primal, boundless and ungoverned? Does it make you want to tear at the roots of your hair, crack the screen of your device, and reach through cyberspace and time to throttle the perpetrator of such an affront?

No?

Well, damn. I suck at trolling.

Heavy's portrayal in fan works does tend to lean towards the mouth-breathing idiot. Perhaps I could shatter some stereotypes and restore respect for the character. Or I could just parody it. Yeah, I'll do that.

Heavy's Behoovement

Nightfall.

Heavy was thinking.

The others were surprised to learn that he was capable of such an act. Of course, they knew better than to say it to his face, or they would lose theirs pretty quickly.

This particular day, which had been a Gregorian weekday in which the Earth made one revolution around its axis, was absolutely identical to all the other Gregorian weekdays in which the Earth makes one revolution around its axis. But the following day was pretty darn important.

It was Sasha's birthday.

He was mulling over the possibilities. Should he organize an impromptu celebration at the last minute? No – that was tacky. He hadn't had the time ever since the robots arrived uninvited on their doorstep, but they avoided their patio, so they were grateful. Should he pen a sonnet in which he praised Sasha's features in flawless verse? No – Sasha didn't speak Russian, and Heavy didn't have a firm enough grasp of Sasha's native English. There was one language that all miniguns understood, though: Dog Latin. A letter in extravagant Dog Latin prose! Yes. That would be Sasha's birthday present.

He went to Medic's desk, taking a pad of paper, a stub of a pencil, and an eraser. He brought them back to his room, and began to write.

While he was considering his verb choices, the Scout popped up behind. "Yo, Heavy! Whatcha doin'?"

Heavy ignored him.

Scout tapped him on the head. "Hello?"

Heavy erased a gerundive and wrote in the neuter form of the corresponding noun.

"Hey! Are you even listening to me?"

"Go away, leetle Scout," growled the Heavy. He found himself wishing that they had made a leash for the energetic, overenthusiastic Bostonian (not the racehorse). Perhaps they could even get him to fill out a permission form in triplicate in order to speak. But unfortunately, the Scout did not know what triplicate meant, so it was no use.

The former-BLU Medic had offered to "fix" him, but knowing Medic, that probably meant more trouble than it was worth.

Scout didn't budge. Heavy sighed.

"What?"

"I'm bored," complained the Scout.

"So?"

"So? Everyone else is asleep except for you and Engie and Engie's banging away at his machines in the workshop."

"So?" Heavy enunciated.

"So I came to you. Whatcha doing?"

"None of your business."

Using Heavy's sizeable shoulder as leverage, Scout raised himself up and peered over it. "Is that a love letter for your minigun?"
Heavy was shocked. How did he know?

"You drew your minigun with a bunch of little hearts around it."

Oh.

"What language is that?"

"Dog Latin."

"Dog Latin? What kind of language is that?"

Heavy paused dramatically for a flashback.

When Heavy was learning English, his tutelage was partially overseen by an enthusiastic linguistic purist and prescriptivist, who insisted on purging all words of Latin descent from the Anglo-Saxon version of English. Heavy tried his best to learn about the Latin influence on archaic English. However, the pool of Latin teachers was very small, so Heavy had to resort to finding weird people in alleyways.

His first, and only, lesson went a little like this:

"Raydicks mallum."

Heavy looked at him. "Rah-dix mal-oom?" he pronounced carefully, following his guide to Latin pronunciation.

"That's what I said."

It wasn't.

The stranger that doubled as his teacher took another swig out of the bottle he carried and explained. "'Radix malum'. It's Latin for 'bad radish'."

Heavy was confused. Radix malorum est cupiditas meant "greed is the root of all evil" – nothing to do with radishes. He could understand the confusion: Radix was root; radish was a root vegetable. Malum meant evil; an extreme of bad – found in many modern English words: malicious, malignant, malingerer, and malaria (this derived from Old Italian, in turn derived from mal-). This he was sure of.

"I thought it meant root. Root of evil." He paused. "All evil," he added as an afterthought.

"No, dummy, it means bad radish. Do you see the word "of" in there? Do you see four words? No. There are two words, radix which is radish and malum which means bad. Like "malware". You know the word "malware"? Of course not. Malware means fashion, but bad fashion. Dumbass."

Heavy had no way to find out whether or not he was correct, as the stranger in the alleyway proceeded to choke on the fish bone he put in his beer. Heavy then attempted the Heimlich maneuver, and that was all she wrote.

Ever since then, Heavy had only been able to use Dog Latin instead of actual Latin.

"Hello? Heavy? Heavy!" Scout waved a hand in front of his face. Heavy snapped out of the flashback.

"Get out."

"But -"

"I will crush tiny skull and nonexistent brain inside if you do not get out now."

Scout's nonexistent brain wisely decided that it wanted to perpetuate its nonexistence. He quickly shuffled out of the room, muttering under his breath.

Heavy continued to write as the world darkened into deep slumber. The moon hung large and glorious in the sky, like a bright jewel among the dark folds of night.

Soon, his masterpiece was complete.

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. In eu aliquam magna. Fusce lobortis mi nunc, non commodo odio lobortis ac. Vivamus quis leo in velit hendrerit hendrerit et vel erat. Aliquam tincidunt ut massa a consectetur. Quisque viverra massa enim, sed ultricies elit accumsan eu. Cras auctor urna ac risus pellentesque gravida. Curabitur semper, sapien in aliquam molestie, enim diam vestibulum urna, mollis fringilla metus dolor quis mi.

Cras laoreet nisi in massa eleifend, nec tincidunt lacus pretium. Nam eget blandit est. Praesent a lacus orci. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque bibendum volutpat quam, sed convallis turpis sagittis ac. Nam ac egestas felis. Interdum et malesuada fames ac ante ipsum primis in faucibus. Donec mauris tellus, pharetra non mattis sed, tempus sed enim."

He smiled. It was perfect.

The next day, the teams convened for a friendly meeting. Well, it was friendly the same way friendly fire was friendly. They were to swap reports of where Gray Mann was directing his robot army, so they could travel separately to those locations and secure the Mann Co. buildings.

Needless to say (but we'll say it anyway), the Soldiers were safely locked away in a trunk during the proceedings.

Nearing the end of their talks, former-BLU Medic cleared his throat. "As a token of goodvill, I vould like to present you a gift. I have been vorking on performing brain transfers, und vit all zese robots around, I managed to create vone…vit a brain!"

One Pyro fainted. Everyone else gaped in shock, except the Engineers, who immediately asked, "What kind of transformer did you use to connect the brain stem's neurons to the wiring?" at the same time.

"I present to you…Larry! I'm vorking on the name."

Former-BLU Medic stepped aside, and Larry the Robot sauntered theatrically over to the former RED team. They stared at him warily. Larry extended a mechanical hand, palm up, and promptly proceeded to produce a pie out of nowhere and slammed it into former-BLU Medic's face.

He held out his arms. "Ta-da!"

*cue montage music, preferably Yakety Sax*

Soldier laughs as Larry juggles a Scout and a Pyro with one hand. Larry claps as Heavy reads his poem for Sasha. Both teams square dance, then Conga together. Demoman falls over.

Heavy laughs. Larry reaches out to take Sasha from Heavy so he could join in. Heavy slaps the robot's hands away. Larry, insulted, makes a grab for Sasha. With his freakish cyborg strength, he succeeds in taking Sasha. Heavy's eyes widen in shock. Slowly, very slowly, the robot begins to crush Sasha between his hands…

*end montage music abruptly*

Sasha shrieked in protest, her metallic sides crumpling and folding under the extortive pressure of the sentient automaton's hands.

Time seemed to slow around them.

With a roar, Heavy charged forward and wrested poor Sasha's mutilated body from the cold fingers of the robot with a brain. He grabbed its face, planted a hand on its shoulder, and twisted its head off its body, ripping out the crude spinal cord. He mashed the head in his fist. The others watched in horror as he ripped out a couple of bolts and ate them, for no apparent reason.

"He killed it! He murdered it!" shrieked the former-BLU Medic. He stalked up to the Engineer, waving a writ in his face. "HE'S A MURDERER!"

"Well, actually," opined the Engineer, "that technically was a justifiable homicide. It was clearly a crime of passion, and manslaughter at worst. The best you can push for is second-degree murder with good lawyers and a pliant jury."

Former-BLU Medic marched up to Heavy, quivering with fury. "How could you? We had a montage together!" he wailed.

Heavy slowly rose, carrying the mangled shards of Sasha in his arms, and fixed Medic with a glare that could melt through steel beams.

"That thing killed Sasha. You are lucky I do not kill you."

Heavy turned his back on the spluttering former-BLU and lumbered to the base.

The following week, the two teams decided it would be best to keep to their own bases. The Demoman, Engineer, Medic, Pyro, Sniper and Soldier hid out in the warehouse behind the supply room to give Heavy space to grieve in peace. And also so he didn't take it out on them. But mostly the first thing.

To pass the time, they drank Demo's scrumpy, spit out Demo's disgusting scrumpy, drank it again because they had no other alcohol, and shared deep, heartfelt stories about their childhoods.

Soldier did not have many warm, personal memories, but he did have many heartwrenching tales about his life during WWII. Not that he didn't enjoy the war. In fact, he LOVED it. Even if he was a few years late in joining, it still didn't stop him from going on about all his...fellow soldiers...and the intestines he had to stuff into them. Not necessarily theirs.

"…And then he had the gall to tell me that he didn't need two colons! Well, I shoved another jejunum right into that bastard to show him who was boss!"

"Achtually," said the Medic, eating peanut butter straight out of the jar with his gloved fingers because screw dignity. "You can haff two jejuni if you connect them just right."

"Well, of course ya'd wanta put more viscera than a man needs into him," remarked the Sniper. "What with your tryin' to put baboon uteruses –"

"Uteri! I vas tryink to see if I could recreate uterus didelphys in a male member of the shpeecies!"

"'Uteruses' is a perfectly acceptable plural form. And that has no practical application outside of satisfying your morbid curiosity!"

"Stay in flipping character, you dipstick," hissed the Engineer.

"You don't usually talk like that," reminded the Sniper.

Engineer frowned. "Oh. Sorry 'bout that." He looked towards the small, high window. "I wonder how Heavy's doin'. He really did love that gun of his."

"Ah, yes," Medic said sadly, licking the remains of the peanut butter off his gloves. "How I wish my Ubercharge could make ze affections invulnerable along with ze body."

"Who needs invulnerability when you fight like a real man – with pain, and suffering, and pain? Pain does not hurt. Pain is weakness leaving the body!" Soldier yelled.

"You're not helping," said Engineer.

"I think I have a solution," said Medic, dabbing his lips delicately with his sleeve. "Perhaps I could give him a lobotomy…"

"A lobotomy!" Engineer exclaimed, eyes widening in shock. "No!"

"Oh, I didn't mean Heavy. I meant Soldier."

"Nobody in their right mind would think that that's any different."

"It vas a legitimate attempt to help! You are a heel!" snapped Medic in exasperation.

"I never did understand using body parts as insults," mused the Engineer. "It is a reduction of sorts, but it isn't very clever."

"Don't be such a round ligament of the uterus," retorted the Medic.

"No lobotomies. Heartbreak is a fact of life, and so is Soldier. You might as well destroy them along with their personalities. Is that what you want?" Engineer looked sternly at Medic.

"No," muttered the Medic. He kicked one of the empty cardboard boxes in frustration.

"Ow!" yelled the box.

"Sorry, Talkin' Box," said the Demoman, hiccupping. "We're jus' passing though." He fell over.

"Scout? Are you hiding in a box?" asked the Engineer.

"I'm not hiding! I wanted to see how high I could jump. I landed in a box and it fell down."

"You know how high you can jump. It's freakishly high."

"Okay, fine! I was hidin' from Heavy. You know he locked me in a closet for six hours for borrowing the intel once? Who knows what he'd do now?"

Another box thumped. "Would you stop your incessant whining?"

"Spy? What are you doin' here? We haven't seen you all chap-day!"

"I was perfecting my new technique of infiltrating enemy bases by disabling their field of vision with a state-of-the-art corrugated fiberboard obfuscation device when the drunken oaf of a Demoman taped up my box."

"Why didn't you just cut yourself out with your knife?" asked the Scout.

Spy was silent for a moment too long.

"You're hiding, too, aren't you?"

Spy elbowed him through the box.

"Don't hide behind your façade of affected indignation," Scout said loftily, shamelessly reading off the psychology book he had with him.

"You are insufferable."

"That's just your projection speaking."

"That's enough, boys. Get out of those boxes."

"I don't wanna come out yet. I have this book in here about Freud and it's awesome."

"You can read above a third grade level?"

"Shut up!"

And thus, they bickered on.

Back at the base, Heavy mourned for Sasha. The others questioned the propriety of their love, whispering behind their backs, casting furtive glances in their direction every time they went out together. Holding a photograph of his beloved, he thought of all the battles he had attended, Sasha, always faithful, at his side. He remembered fondly the warmth of their enemies' arterial blood spraying in his face, Sasha's bullets embedded in their sides…and more recently, the sound of metal screaming against metal. He rhapsodized mentally about her gleaming flanks, her sultry purr, how eagerly she yielded to his touch, and his heart welled with grief, though nothing could consume the yawning chasm in which Sasha once resided.

Then, he remembered the words of a teacher of philosophy he met in another alley after the untimely demise of his Latin teacher.

"What is identity? You may think you know what it is, my boy, but consider the following: If you build a ship, sail it for years and years, never replacing it, components will be bound to need replacement. If you replace the hull, the stern, the deck and the mast piece by piece, you'll eventually replace the entire ship with new parts. If you saved the pieces, then use the pieces you saved to build a new ship, which one is the original?"

Heavy slowly stood up. He looked at his picture of Sasha. He had repaired her day after day of toil and wear, and didn't have the heart to throw away the pieces. He felt torn, more torn than he had during his brief fling with Natascha. If he put together the pieces, wouldn't that be the same as having Sasha again? The new gun would be Sasha's clone, twin down to the firing pin - but she would be made of Sasha! But it wouldn't be her. It could never be her.

Or would it be her?

He spent the rest of the day tormenting himself, pondering the philosophical conundrum while Sasha's parts lay under the white sheet he took from the infirmary.

After several revolutionary reconsiderations of the treatises treating the subject matter, he decided that he didn't care. He would do anything to get Sasha back.

He gingerly peeled back the sheet, flinching at the horrifically gnarled mass of metal that was once Sasha. He cradled it gently, forcing himself to touch the mangled steel and peel apart the useable pieces. His heart twisted every time the metal snapped.

Next, he took out every piece of Sasha he had saved up. Some of them were nearly new, only a scratch as fine as hair on them. Only the best for Sasha.

He worked feverishly, cleaning, polishing, and fitting each piece snugly against each other. He lost track of the hours, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was Sasha, and Sasha being whole again.

At last, the minigun began to take shape. The barrels. The chambers. He nearly choked on the hope that he desperately felt, but he could not hope. What if…?

No, the thought was too terrible to finish.

The unfeeling, indifferent sun had set and risen as if it didn't know that what he was doing, reviving Sasha, was the most important thing to have happened since the creation of the earth. Nay, the universe.

She was the universe.

When he had done all that he could, he willed himself to pick up new Sasha. She was the subtle perfection she had always been – still beautiful even when scarred with experience. His spirits rose. But was she capable of being used? Would she ever again join him in dubious battle?

Trembling, he tentatively took her by her handles, and revved her up.

She roared to life! Her barrels spun and whirred, as lively as they ever were. His heart was whole again.

Overcome with joy, he didn't know whether to laugh, or weep, or simply luxuriate in the glorious sound of Sasha singing to him again, so he did all three. He sang back to her. In his jubilation, he tossed her up to the ceiling, arms outstretched expectantly to catch her again.

She smashed into the ceiling and was deflected onto the hard linoleum.

Once again, she lay in pieces.

But Heavy knew how to fix her now.

~DA END~

Are you still here?

What?

Okay.

I know, I know, proper self-deprecation must walk the fine line (or in my case, jam my foot up its business and muss it all up) between genuine self-critique and blatant like-fishing, but just to be clear, what I'm actually doing is insulting everybody's taste in literature. (;P) But still. Thank you for sticking around.